


A Gift For Claudia

by immortal_conclusions



Category: Interview With the Vampire (1994), Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Angst, Christmas Fluff, Consent Issues, Gift Giving, Internalized Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rue Royale fluff, Secret Relationship, Slice of Life, Tooth Rotting Fluff, Unhealthy Relationships, Vampire Family, vampire co-parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28266639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortal_conclusions/pseuds/immortal_conclusions
Summary: December, 1797. Louis and Lestat go Christmas shopping for Claudia.
Relationships: Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	A Gift For Claudia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [headfrst4halos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/headfrst4halos/gifts).



> This was originally posted as a Secret Santa gift to headfrst4halos on tumblr. They asked for something with the theme of giving/receiving a gift.

December, 1797

Sunset happened early at this time of year, and our nights together at Rue Royale were long. It was an unusually cold year, with a few cold snaps that I knew from my time as a planter had certainly gone unprecedented in the almanacs.

This particular night began the same way as all the rest. I stirred awake with Claudia’s tiny hands clasped around my own. We rose from our coffin, and I had gotten her dressed. I brushed her golden curls, and helped her fix the ribbons she chose in her hair.

When that was all finished, I went to my room to dress myself. Over the past two years, since we had moved into the Rue Royale flat, Lestat had been gradually replacing my preferred muted outfits with all manner of brightly colored silk waistcoats and jackets. Yes, it was intrusive, and every time he blazed into my room unannounced with these new acquisitions I would bristle. Worst of all was when he made me try them on for him. He said it was because he didn’t know if they would suit me, drab and lackluster as I was, and might return them, or give them to someone else. He’d say this with a sneer. Of course he never returned anything. Sometimes he’d admire me from afar, sprawled on the divan. Other times he’d walk in a slow circle around me, adjusting here and there, preening as if it were _him_ on display, not me. Typical, vain Lestat. My skin would burn hot under his gaze, no matter if I’d fed yet that night or not.

Now I chose a pair in dark teal and russet. I had just fastened my cravat when I heard Claudia shriek. My heart leapt into my throat and I went running out into the foyer. I found her standing before the picture window which overlooked our courtyard.

“Look, Papa!” Claudia gasped. She clasped her tiny hands together in delight. “There are little stars falling from the sky! Oh, look!”

I knelt down beside her, relieved. I felt my heartbeat slow. “Oh Claudia, you gave me a fright.”

“I’m sorry, Papa, but look! _Look!_ What is it?”

“Isn’t it beautiful? This is called snow.” Snow was rare in New Orleans, and it had not yet snowed in her lifetime of seven years.

“ _Snow_ ,” she repeated reverently.

“It happens when rain falls from the sky, and the air is cold enough to freeze it as it falls.”

She considered this a moment, her head tilting to one side. The she smiled, her kittenish fangs showing fully. “Like ice!”

I smiled and kissed her head. “Yes, very much like ice.”

For a few minutes we watched the snow fall outside the window, into our courtyard. The moon was bright and gibbous and it cast the tiny flakes into relief against the ink dark sky. The flakes melted quickly when they touched the ground and they did not accumulate. But they still danced joyously in the air, unknowing of their sodden fates.

I heard footsteps behind us, light across the floorboards. I tensed, despite myself. I think Claudia must have noticed the way my shoulders drew up, because she looked up at me, vague concern in her eyes. “What’s wrong, Papa?” she whispered.

I pursed my lips and closed my eyes. Shook my head slightly. “Nothing, little doll,” I managed.

“Ah! Snow!” It was _him_. He came up behind us and rested one hand on my shoulder and the other on Claudia’s head.

“Yes, Papa Jaune!” Claudia turned to face him and jumped up and down. “Papa Noir told me! Snow! Did you know that it is just the same as rain, but it is frozen?”

“Of course. When I was growing up in a far away land, long, long ago, the snow would fall for weeks and it would from great high piles, much taller than you, chérie,” Lestat said boastfully. He had puffed his chest out. It was all I could do not to scoff. Only last week he had told her he had come from a desert.

She was impressed. “You must know a lot of about snow, then.”

“Certainly more than Papa Noir does.” He laughed. I bristled.

“Will you join us, Papa Noir?” Claudia asked. “Out in the snow? _Please?_ ”

I swallowed. Sometimes it was so terribly hard to say no to her, to her wide blue eyes and her cherub smile. I didn’t want to deny her anything. And yet. And yet it was impossible for me to go with them, with _him_ , and there was no way I could explain this to her.

I managed a smile. “No, my darling. Not tonight. I must work on our ledgers.”

She frowned and stomped a foot. “You are always doing that, Papa. Can we hire somebody else to do the ledgers, Papa Jaune? Then Papa Noir could come hunt with us!”

Lestat smirked. “No, _ma chaton_. Your Papa will not give up his ledgers. He has great fun with them. He enjoys them as you enjoy playing with your dolls, or as I enjoy playing the piano. He is very _boring_.” He then made a face, which Claudia found amusing, and she laughed.

I was almost grateful to him for supporting my excuse. But I knew it was more to mock me than anything. I fastened Claudia’s frock coat, and tied her bonnet. They were both new and trimmed in blue silk; Lestat had just purchased them last week. I told her she looked marvelous, like a lady, and she beamed and twirled.

Lestat pulled on his own coat, an ostentatious thing trimmed with fur around the collar. He twirled as well, ever-flamboyant, perhaps more for his own amusement rather than Claudia’s. As she pranced around the room in excitement, in anticipation of the nightly hunt which she enjoyed so much, he came to my side.

He stopped a pace away from me. “We will be back in one hour,” he said coldly. “I expect you back here then. I have plans and I will not allow you to spoil them.”

It was all I could do not to scowl. “Very well,” I said finally. “I will do as you say.” I could not keep the edge out of my voice. I didn’t ask what his plans were. It scarcely mattered.

He smiled tightly. It did not reach his eyes. Then he swept Claudia up in his arms. He brought her to my side. “Give Papa Noir a kiss.”

She leaned forward and touched her tiny lips to my cold cheek. “Now you, Papa,” she told Lestat.

I stood stock still. He kissed me. I endured it. It was far from the first time had had done this. And on rare occasion, when my loneliness grew so intense and so unbearable, and I was weak from not feeding, and Claudia was safely away at her lessons, and the room was dark and his body was warm, I had been persuaded to kiss him back. But not here. Not in front of Claudia, dear impressionable Claudia. Not a muscle moved on my face.

“See, ma cocotte? _Boring_.” He made the face again, and she laughed.

He flashed a cold look at me over his shoulder, and I returned it. His eyes were like shards of ice. They sent a shiver through my body. I had long since stopped wondering if it was hatred or desire. After all, they amounted to the same thing.

I went out to hunt alone, as I always did. There were children playing in the streets, entranced by the falling snow. I passed them by. I chose my victim, a young man with pale brown hair, in an alleyway in Gentilly. I swallowed down the blood, the cursed, divine blood, and dropped his corpse behind some crates. I lingered just long enough to feel the head spread through my veins, down to the very tips of my extremities. Bringing me to life. I could feel my senses sharpening and my mind clearing. It was a rebirth through death. I wondered where Lestat and Claudia were. I hoped they were—I hoped _Lestat_ was keeping _her_ safe. I straightened my clothes and glanced at my pocketwatch. The hour was nearly up. Truthfully I didn’t care about Lestat’s petty demand and would have been more than happy to spite him. But…it would cause a scene, and I didn’t want anything to frighten Claudia. Not on a night when she was clearly so delighted by the snow. I could not spoil that for her, even if it required the acquiescence which so wounded me. I hurried back to Rue Royale.

“Papa Noir!”

Claudia ran across the parlor to me and threw her little arms around my legs. I bent to her and embraced her. She was so warm, her small body radiating heat from the hunt.

“Louis!”

Lestat was smiling. His demeanor had entirely changed from when I had seen them off. He came to me and brushed some snowflakes from my shoulders. He eyes snared on to mine, and lingered there for a moment. There was something I couldn’t read in his face. Whatever it was, it was not menacing - that was really all I cared about. I moved away from him and made to put up my coat.

“Ah - no need for that. Put your coat back on Louis, we were just about to leave. Claudia has a drawing lesson now, don’t you remember?”

I frowned. It was Tuesday, and Claudia did not have any lessons scheduled for this particular evening as far as I could recall. And I was the one who scheduled all her lessons in the first place, so I would know.

He drew close to me and wrapped his hand around my forearm. “I spoke with Mme. Caillier and rescheduled her lesson,” he whispered. “You and I are going out tonight. _Alone_.” He smirked, narrowing his eyes suggestively.

What a fiend. I scoffed and threw off his arm. “Very well, Monsieur. It’s not as if I have any choice in the matter.”

We dropped Claudia off at the home of Mme. Caillier, in the Faubourg St. Marie. Then he brought me back to the French Quarter, but we did not return home. There were rows of shops lined up, lit up brightly. Garlands of evergreen and moss and bright ribbons decorated the eaves of the buildings up and down the street.

My heart sank. “We are going shopping?” I just wanted to go home and read.

“Haven’t you thought about what to get our daughter for Christmas? Or did you forget entirely? What kind of father are you?”

“No, of course I’ve thought about it,” I said, annoyed. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I rather wonder if _you_ have. After all, last year you nearly forgot and had to go running out on Christmas Eve to look for the very last dolls left in the shops.”

“I got her very fine dolls,” he snapped. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about them.”

I laughed then. “Yes Lestat, I admit I am a grown man who does not know the first thing about _dolls_.”

That made him very angry, I could tell. He practically snarled and stalked off into the darkness ahead of me. He could be so childish sometimes, I thought. But not in a way that was becoming: he was like a petulant brat. It made me wonder how old he _really_ was. He’d always bragged to me about how ancient he was, how many centuries had roamed the earth killing and making a spectacle of himself, but at this point I had no reason to believe him. For all of his terrorizing displays of power, at times it was hard not to see him as the twenty or twenty-one year old he was in appearance.

He marched in and out of many stores, and I trailed behind. He was almost manic. He bought more china dolls, of course, and beautiful little frocks and bonnets, and all manner of little glass and ceramic baubles. Anything that caught his eye. I was more discerning, I thought, and settled upon a set of paints for our Claudia, as well as two carefully chosen books which I felt were appropriate for her age and intellect. We arranged to have the packages delivered to our address the night before Christmas.

Lastly, we went to the finest artisan’s shop in New Orleans.

We laid eyes on it at the same time. It was in the center of the large main room, clearly on display. It was an ornate wooden easel, with a pattern of vines along the base and a carved wreath at the apex. There was gold inlay across the vertical pieces. It was almost a sculpture, a piece of art itself. Claudia had taken a particular interest in painting lately, and although her skill was still limited to simple still life scenes and watercolors, she was fast advancing. Such a fine thing would only encourage her.

“It’s perfect,” I whispered.

Lestat looked delighted. Especially because it was clearly one of the most expensive pieces in the entire shop, and he loved to make a good show of his money. Or, rather, my money.

He inquired about the easel. The salesgirl who had accompanied us, seeing that we were clearly people of some import, left and returned with a middle-aged matron with a highly distinguished air. She was evidently the owner’s wife.

Lestat spoke to her a bit about this and that, where it had been constructed, what materials had been used, all of this mostly for show. She answered his questions evenly, with a gracious air, and I did not speak. Lestat seemed positively giddy with excitement, and I should have known it would be only a matter of time before he forgot himself.

“Oh yes, our daughter will love this, don’t you think, darling?” He threw an arm around my shoulder. He was beaming.

I stiffened.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she raised an eyebrow. “ _Your_ daughter?”

How in God’s name could he be so _stupid_? How many times had we been through this before? Lestat was a fool, such a blasted fool, and he probably couldn’t even comprehend how his idiotic lapse could harm us.

I cleared my throat. “Monsieur Valois’ wife is quite ill, and so I have accompanied him in her stead to procure a gift for their daughter.”

“He is my brother-in-law,” Lestat put in. He was sobered now, falling back into the roles we had set. He clapped my shoulder once, hard, masculine perhaps, and then side-stepped away.

The woman gave us a hard look. Perhaps we shouldn’t have said anything at all. Perhaps that had just made it worse. “I hope your wife recovers quickly, God-willing,” she said. Her words were cold and clipped as she looked Lestat up and down. Her manner had changed so quickly, and it filled me with dread.

I swallowed and opened my chequebook to pay the amount for the easel. I busied myself writing down the numbers and signing my name, trying to forget what had just happened. I tried to swallow down my anxiety but it was to no avail. This woman was well-connected, it seemed; even if she was not of the upper class, what if she knew one of Claudia’s tutors? What if she started asking questions? What if someone tried to take Claudia away from us—and then we would have to be on the run, we would have to leave this life of luxury behind, all the balls and the theater and the galleries would be no more—would we have to leave New Orleans entirely? To live in the swamp? That was no place to raise a child, oh, oh God, _Claudia! Stupid, stupid, reckless Lestat._

Once I was done, I said a perfunctory _Adieu_ and walked swiftly out to the street. Lestat followed, and caught up with me after a few paces. He laughed, unbothered, slinging an arm around my shoulders again. “Why do you look so positively _green_ , Louis?”

“She—she—you must know what she was thinking,” I said tightly. “About us.”

“And whatever is that?” He asked. I glanced at him. He was watching me steadily, and though he was smiling, there was something hard in his eyes. That shard again. I wondered where it had come from.

But I knew he was challenging me. I would not be baited. “You _know_ ,” I insisted.

He laughed again. His laughter was free, open. It rang through the air. It positively infuriated me. “I do not. Please, Louis, do enlighten me.”

I stopped walking. He withdrew his arm and turned to face me. I stepped forward, perhaps meaning to shove him. But something stopped me, and I drew back into the shadows of an awning, some store long closed for the night. It was he who stepped forward to me. I felt, all of a sudden, that I was his victim.

“What do you mean, Louis?”

“I—“

“What do you mean?”

“They.” I swallowed. He could not possibly be this dense. “They think we are—“ I stared at him, hard, and crossed my arms over my chest. I could not speak any more.

He sighed, and looked once up and down the street. Then he stepped forward, into my space, and pushed me against the wall of the building. He pressed his mouth to mine, hard, and his mouth was hot, and it was everything, and it was so, _so_ wrong—

“Perhaps they are right,” He whispered against my lips.

I took a shuddering breath. I felt a quicksilver feeling run up my spine, straight from my groin. I could feel everywhere he was touching me, the heated points of his fingertips on my arms, the ghostly brush of his upper lip against mine.

“No,” I whispered. With every breath I regained some measure of control over myself. I pushed him away, perhaps harder than I had intended to. “No, they are _not_.”

When the night of Christmas Eve arrived, I rose early to place all of my wrapped gifts under the tree. Lestat had gotten there first, evidently, and his gifts formed veritable piles. That in itself did not irritate me; Claudia would enjoy seeing such splendor. The easel, being too large to wrap, we draped in a silk sheet behind the Christmas tree. Its shape was still easy to discern from beneath the sheet, and so to maintain the grand surprise Lestat had swathed it in bows and ribbons.

Lestat entertained the idea of taking us all to the Christmas mass at midnight, at the Cathedral, but I was vehemently opposed. I couldn’t think of anything more blasphemous than the idea of the three of us there. Three killers, the unholy family. I think Lestat liked to attend church services simply he _could_ , to prove that he was a vampire who had no fear of such things, or of anything. There could be no genuine feeling behind it. If I allowed him to take Claudia along, he would probably whisper in her ear throughout the entire service, asking her which of the poor souls in the pews she fancied to take tonight. I knew it was somewhat of a folly to be concerned for the spiritual development of a child-killer, but that was simply too much to abide.

Luckily, he abandoned the idea when Claudia asked him to help her decorate the flat. She had made little snowflakes cut out of folded paper; one of her tutors had shown her how. She wanted him to help her hang them throughout the place, up on the windows and the doorframes. The three of us lit all the lamps and candles in the flat, and it was positively glowing when we were finished.

Then, after midnight, it was time to open the gifts. Claudia changed into a fine green satin dress with a red sash, and I tied a matching ribbon in her hair. The three of us gathered around the Christmas tree, a large round one which Lestat and Claudia had selected one evening after their hunt. Lestat stretched out on the floor, and I sat on the settee with Claudia at my feet.

Claudia presented each of us with a gift. They came in flat packages, wrapped messily with the hands of a child. They were drawings of us. She had captured our likenesses remarkably well, and it was already evident that her skill went beyond her years. I knew that all vampires had a talent for mimicry, but I knew it wasn’t that alone. Claudia had a talent all of her own, and it was clear she had put much thought into each of the portraits. We praised her effusively, and I was very touched. I promised her I would keep mine in the very top drawer of my writing desk, and look upon it often.

Then came more dolls from Lestat, of course. At least Claudia seemed to enjoy them, and she christened them immediately. Giselle was the one with the golden hair, Renée with the red, and Paulette had dark ringlets. And she received a new chiffon dress, of the latest style (according to Lestat), wrapped up in a package with a huge bow.

She climbed on to his lap and embraced him, and he held her close. “I love you, chaton,” he said.

“I love you too, Papa Jaune!”

Something in my heart swelled, seeing the two of them like that. Two golden haired angels, embracing as if in a painting, a vision. There was a word tugging at the corners of my mind— _family_. I swallowed thickly. _I do not deserve them_ , I thought suddenly. Then I pushed that thought down with a twist at the corner of my mouth. I did not deserve our angel, our Claudia. Lestat was a fiend, a monster. He was no angel. He was merely the price I had to pay to keep her.

Next came my gifts for her, the paints and the books. She looked just as delighted as she had with Lestat’s dolls and dress and baubles, and climbed on my lap to kiss me on the cheek. She made me promise to read the books to her, even though she was already getting quite adept at reading on her own. I promised, and hugged her close.

Lestat had gotten me more clothes, of course. He knew I didn’t care for them, that I resented how he tried to control every single aspect of my life, and yet he had decided to get them for my anyways. To mock me, or to exert his power, or both, I knew. I pretended to be delighted, for Claudia, and removed the emerald silk waistcoat from its paper wrapping and held it up to myself for them to appraise. They ooh’ed and ahh’ed and clapped, both of them in unison, and it did make me smile.

Finally came the grand surprise, the easel.

“We have one last surprise for you, my darling!” Lestat announced, clapping his hands together.

She gasped in delight and made a show of swiveling her head around the room, deliberately ignoring the large mountain of silk and ribbons half-hidden behind the tree. “ _Wherever might it be?_ ”

“Why don’t you check behind the tree?” I suggested.

She beamed at me and did as I said. When she pulled at the silk curtain it tumbled down immediately, like a red waterfall. Then she shrieked in delight.

“Is it for _me?_ For _me?_ ” She ran around in a circle, barely able to contain her excitement.

“Yes, Claudia,” I said. “All for you. Were you wondering why I got you all those new paints? Well, this is why. Papa Jaune and I thought it was high time for you to have your own easel at home to practice on.”

“Oh, thank you!” She hugged me, and then Lestat. “Thank you, thank you! It’s perfect.”

Then she went to examine it further, and Lestat showed her the gold inlays and the carvings and relayed all the details he had heard about it from the matron at the shop. She listened attentively, and then asked him to move it to the music room, where she would have her “studio.” We placed it behind the harpsichord, near the window where should have a fine view of the night when she painted on it.

After that we played some Christmas games, and Lestat played the harpsichord while Claudia sang, and it was a grand time. Eventually Claudia yawned widely, her fangs flashing in the light. She was so unselfconscious, so innocent. “I’m very sleepy, Papa,” she said to me.

“Let’s get you to bed then,” I murmured. I gathered her up into my arms. “You’ve had a long night.”

“I had fun! This was the best Christmas.” she insisted. She yawned again. “Don’t you agree, Papa Noir?”

I kissed her forehead. It was only her second Christmas with us, and perhaps she still had some memory of Christmases before, where she had been a poor child living in that shack. I shuddered to think of it, to think of the night I had found her. “I agree, Claudia. Would you like to take one of your new dolls into the coffin with you?”

“Why not all of them?” Lestat asked. He was already gathering all three new dolls into his arms. He flashed me a wicked smile. He knew it would make it especially crowded for me.

“Yes, all of them! What a wonderful idea, Papa Jaune!”

He went ahead of us into the room with mine and Claudia’s coffin and arranged the dolls. Once she was changed out of her fine Christmas dress and into her sleep clothes she hopped right in, and settled in among them. She must have indeed been tired from all the excitement of the evening – her eyelids were nearly closed when I kissed her goodnight.

I still had perhaps another hour until I would have to sleep. I made for my room, thinking that perhaps I would have the chance to read. I blew out the lamps in the hall as I went.

Lestat stopped me in the hallway near my room, with a hand to my chest. He had seemingly come out of nowhere. I jumped, backing against the wall.

“Don’t be so frightened,” he snapped. “Why are you always so frightened?”

“If you didn’t appear out of nowhere, like some ghost, perhaps I wouldn’t be,” I told him.

He scoffed. “You’re the one who walks around like a ghost all the time.”

I sighed, cross. I was tired, and I didn’t want to play his ridiculous games. “What do you want, Lestat?”

“Didn’t you have a good time tonight? Don’t you think Claudia enjoyed herself?”

“Yes,” I said evenly. I didn’t know what he was getting at.

“Well.” He tapped his foot on the ground and then sniffed. He raised his chin. “I have something for you.” He brought forth the hand that had been behind his back and handed me a small package. It was wrapped in silver paper. Why had he bothered to wrap it such? As if I were a child, as if I could be mollified with prettily wrapped gifts. Lestat was such a fool if he thought that would be sufficient to get whatever it was that he wanted.

“Merry Christmas, Louis,” he said.

I slipped a finger under the edge of the wrapping, and my glass-like fingernail tore it easily. It was a book, a rather slim red volume. I turned it over. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. My breath caught in my throat. I opened it and flipped through the pages: they were thick and smooth. The words were typeset in an elegant font, and oh the words…they glimmered before my vampire eyes, and the vivid, beautiful images the words conjured flickered in my mind.

“I thought we could…I thought we could read them to Claudia together,” he said nonchalantly.

I stared at him. His eyes gleamed in the low light. His brown was low, and his mouth…his mouth was set into a line. He looked apprehensive, yes, on the verge of being provoked, but beneath that there was something else. “Oh, Lestat,” I whispered.

I stepped forward, and touched my hand to his lapel. I stroked my hand down it, looking up slowly into his eyes. Something softened in him. I moved towards him, inch by inch. When my lips met his, I heard a small noise in the back of his throat. He cupped the back of my head, and deepened the kiss. I let him, I let him turn me so that my back was to the wall. There was that heat again, building in me. He tilted his head just so, so that the inside of his lower lip scraped against one of my fangs. The sharp taste of his blood lit like a flame on my tongue, and flooded my mind, and suddenly that was all I could think of. It tasted of him, of the way his golden hair shone in candlelight, of the way his laughter would fill any room. Of the way he looked at me sometimes, his eyes piercing into me, and there was something so strong there, so intense that I couldn’t put any words to it… 

But his wound healed, and the sensation blurred and faded. He broke away from me with a gasp. “Come to bed with me,” he whispered. “Louis.”

I hesitated. “Lestat, Claudia is expecting me, and—”

“Or don’t,” he said. He sounded angry again. He’d turned away, and I couldn’t see his eyes.

I swallowed. I brushed my hand down his cheek, stroked some of the hair behind his ear. “I suppose…I suppose she is asleep by now. I can,” I took a breath. “I can join her after.”

I felt his smile more than I saw it. His hand found mine in the din. “Let’s go, then,” he whispered.


End file.
